Born
in Italy in 1927, Ferdinando Baldi made his move into cinema in the
1950s, with a series of now forgotten films, including the musical
comedy
Assi alla Ribalta (1954). His big break came in 1960 as the co-director of
David and Goliath
(1960) - part
peplum, part biblical epic, it starred the infamous
Hollywood name Orson Welles. The sucess of this film saw Baldi strongly
associated with the sword and sandal films for the next few years, and
he directed a variety of genre films, including
I, Tartari (1961), again starring Welles, and
Son of Cleopatra
(1964) with American actor Mark Damon. 1966 was the busiest year of his
career, when he shot Cameron Mitchell in a duel of pepla -
Massacre in the Black Forest (1967) and
In the Shadow of the Eagles (1966), the low budget spy film
Suicide Mission to Singapore (1966), but most importantly, directing a young
Franco Nero in the interesting
Spaghetti Western,
Texas Addio
(1966). By 1966, the European Western genre was in full force and as
with the now almost extinct sword and sandal films, Baldi was soon
firmly associated with the genre.
Little Rita of the West
(1967) was his next project - a unique and very entertaining Spaghetti
Western musical, envisaged as a vehicle for the newly popular Italian
singer Rita Pavone, it importantly marked the Spaghetti Western debut
of actor Terence Hill who would go on to be a genre mainstay (and indeed marked his first credit as 'Terence Hill'). The next
year's
Preparati la Bara! (1968) was the director's most 'normal' genre entry and was his response to
Sergio Corbucci's classic
Django (1966) with Terence Hill in one of his few completely straight faced roles. He continued with
Gunman of Ave Maria
(1969) - a distinctively plot focused Western with the atmosphere of a
Greek tragedy, although at the turn of the decade he returned to his
classic action films with the pirate adventure
The Corsairs (1971).
By the beginning of the 1970s, the
Spaghetti Western
was in decline and quanity was far outweighing quality for most of the
genre's rather repetitive entries, however Baldi still managed to pull
out the unique
Blindman (1971), inspired by the Japanese
Zatôichi
blind swordsman films it was the first of four very distinctive films
that Baldi shot with the American actor Tony Anthony, and it
famously starred the ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. After dabbling into
euro-crime with the generic
The Sicilian Connection (1972), Baldi returned to the struggling Westerns with a duo of comedy titles,
Carambola (1974) and
Carambola, filotto... tutti in buca (1974) which were shameless rip-offs of the popular Bud Spencer/Terence Hill films, and the simply bizarre
Get Mean (1976), starring Tony Anthony, that saw his
stranger
character fighting Vikings and supernatural adversities in the Old
West. A couple more dips into popular exploitation genres came with
his
giallo title
Nove Ospiti per un Delitto (1977) and the '
Last House on the Left' inspired
La Ragazza del Vagone Letto
(1979). Come the 1980s, he reunited with Tony Anthony for a duet of
suitably daft 3D adventure films, the post-Spaghetti Western
Comin' at Ya! (1981) and Indiana Jones style adventure
Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983). His final three productions were a trio of war films, the only memorable title being
Mission Finale (1988) - uniquely, being funded by, and filmed in North Korea. He died in November 2007.
Although dabbling in most genres of Euro-exploitation cinema, Baldi is best remembered now for his various
Spaghetti Western
titles, which actively rank as some of the genre's best. Despite this,
the director himself all but slipped into obscurity in the
decades since, with very little being known about his life outside of
his films.
